The growth in health care spending has slowed in recent years but could speed up again as the economy strengthens and the population ages. Even with slower growth rates, however, federal and state governments need to pursue reforms and innovations to keep public health programs sustainable.

House Ways and Means Chair Dave Camp (R-Mich.) remarked recently that there are some similar ideas in the tax reform proposals that he and President Obama have suggested. Normally overlap between Republican and Democrat ideas is a welcome occurrence.

As we await the full release of the President’s Fiscal Year 2015 Budget, some important specifics have been slowly made public. It looks like this budget, as is usually the case, will contain a mixture of sensible reforms and politically expedient omissions.

The first bit of news is that this year’s budget will not contain a proposal -- included last year -- to switch the government-wide formula for measuring inflation to a more accurate index called the “Chained CPI.”

Like Frankenstein’s monster, the statutory debt limit will soon come back to life. It has been in a state of suspended animation since the October 2013 budget deal that ended the government shutdown.

The terms of that deal allowed the government to borrow without limit through this Friday, when the suspension period ends and the current debt level of about $17.3 trillion instantly becomes the new limit.